The province of Alberta has announced a $35 billion dollar incentive program that aims to help big industry in the construction of new carbon capture utilization and storage projects over the next decade by covering up to 12 per cent of eligible capital costs that companies undertake to build these new CCUS sites.
“We’re working to phase out emissions, we are not phasing out energy production,” Premier Danielle Smith, of the United Conservative Party said in announcing the grant program on Tuesday in Edmonton.
Smith said the Alberta Carbon Capture Incentive program will “further support Alberta’s position as a world leader in CCUS technology while also helping major industries in the province cut emissions and grow the economy.”
Reuters reported that chemical company Dow Canada credited this grant program, and a similar federal CCUS incentive announced last year, for its announcement to invest $6.5 billion at its existing site in Fort Saskatchewan, where it will leverage CCUS technologies to help achieve emissions reductions.
The Dow project, branded Path2Zero, sets the company on a path to hit net-zero carbon targets by 2050, by creating “the world’s first net-zero carbon emissions integrated ethylene cracker,” a pdf brochure reads. The company claims this project will create up to 8,000 construction jobs and as many as 500 full-time jobs once the project is in operation.
Smith said the Alberta Carbon Capture Incentive Program could cost Alberta between $3.5 to $5.3 billion dollars if fully implemented.
